Sunday, September 16, 2012

Tunisia: Mossad in the Maghreb: Stepping up its game

Tunis, (Al-Akhbar): For the past three months, the Arab Maghreb
countries have been witnessing a growing number of controversies and
scandals concerning cells linked to Israeli espionage activities.

It began when an informants network was dismantled in Mauritania
early this year. Then Mossad made the headlines in Algeria and Morocco
in a string of reports, rumors, and hoaxes.

Finally, a new scandal reverberated across Tunisia last week
involving a wide network of Mossad operations, including espionage
centers using the country as a base to spy across the Maghreb region.

Abderraouf al-Ayadi, head of the Wafa Movement which split from the
Rally for the Republic (RPR), caused a huge stir last week when he
revealed that Mossad has stepped up its activities in post-revolutionary
Tunisia.

He said that these activities were being conducted under the “cover
of European and US NGOs that claim to be charitable, humanitarian, or
cultural.”

This echoes earlier statements by the head of the Tunisian Workers
Party (formerly POCT), Hamma al-Hammami, about “Israeli spy networks
operating in post-revolution Tunisia that took advantage of the state of
chaos and lawlessness that swept the country following president Zine
al-Abidine Ben Ali’s escape.”

The information revealed by Ayadi and Hammami coincided with a
February report by the Yafa Center for Studies and Research focusing on
Mossad activities in the Maghreb. The report said that the agency began
concentrating its operations in Tunisia following the PLO’s exit from
Beirut and relocation to Tunis in 1982.

Interest in the region declined after the signing of the Oslo accords, until the Tunisian revolution brought it back.

The report spoke about the post-Oslo Tunisian-Israeli rapprochement
which became public with the establishment of a bureau for economic
cooperation in 1996.

The relationship included a secret item about the “establishment of a
system for security coordination between the Mossad and Tunisia by
Shalom Cohen, a Tunisian Jew working in the North Africa section of the
Israeli Mossad. In the same year, he became the director of the Israeli
interest bureau in Tunisia.”

According to the report, Cohen used his diplomatic cover to build a
“Mossad network” based in the capital Tunis, with branches in Sousse and
Djerba.

The Yafa center information is consistent with that which Ayadi said
he had received from a high-ranking Tunisian security source who
reported the surveillance of a secret Mossad network “of around 300
agents” distributed over the three spying bases.

The first base was in the capital and run by a certain Nachman
Jalboagh. It focused on Algeria by collecting information, monitoring
targets, and recruiting agents.

The second is in Sousse and run by Doron Pierre. Its operations were
primarily inside Tunisia, especially the monitoring the remaining
Palestinians in Tunisia, Salafi movements, and groups opposing peace
with Israel.

The third is in Djerba, run by Nurit Tsur, and focuses on Libya. It
also acts to protect the Jewish sect in Tunisia, which is concentrated
on the island, and collects information about Jewish archaeological
sites and landmarks in Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya.

Tunisian authorities have remained silent despite the uproar caused
by the revelations. The government has yet to take any public action
concerning the issue.

Speaking to al-Maghreb newspaper, interior minister Ali al-Arid said
“the statements concerning 300 Mossad spies in Tunisia, working under
the cover of cultural NGOs and travel agencies, are unfounded and
completely irresponsible.”

“They are intended to disturb the work of security agencies that
toil night and day to protect Tunisia. Anyone who has information about
the issue should contact the security agencies so they can confirm it,”
he added.

Tunisian anti-normalization activists believe that the interior
minister’s statements contradict information broadcast on official
Israeli television in the first days of the Tunisian revolution.

Mossad had boasted about “a special operation in Tunisia, under the
cover of European companies, to evacuate a group of Israelis who were
visiting Djerba, the site of the oldest synagogue in the world,
al-Ghariba temple.”

Tunisian activists suggest that “Mossad activities and crimes are
not new in Tunisia. The most famous was the bombing of the Hammam
al-Shat suburb in the autumn of 1985. It targeted the offices of late
Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. The Mossad also carried out
numerous assassinations in Tunisia, including that of the mastermind
behind the first intifada, Abu Jihad, in 1988.”

Following the Oslo agreement, nationalist and leftist currents, as
well as anti-normalization associations accused Ben Ali of “facilitating
Mossad operations and activities in Tunisia.”

This was highlighted in a documentary broadcast by Tunisian
television following the revolution called “The State of Corruption.”
The film exposed the significant role that Ben Ali played in setting the
scene for the accords.

Following Oslo, the former dictator opened an Israeli economic
cooperation bureau in Tunis. The office initiated its activities by
contacting several Tunisian intellectuals and journalists to lure them
into normalization activities. The majority refused to be involved.

The bureau was later closed due to popular pressure following the
2002 Israeli assault on the West Bank and the consequent siege of Yasser
Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah.

The alarm sounded by Ayadi and Hammami is based on evidence and
information corroborated by rights activist Ahmed al-Kahlawi, president
of the Tunisian Association for Fighting Normalization and Supporting
the Arab Resistance (TAFNSAR).

Kahlawi said that “several foreign organizations active in
post-revolution Tunisia, such as Freedom House, play a major role in
propagating the culture of normalization under the pretext of defending
human rights.”

He also laid bare the schemes of an organization called “AMIDEAST,
which teaches English under the supervision of the US embassy. It
entices students to give up their animosity towards Israel and promotes
programs that claim to call for peace and dialogue between cultures, but
in reality it aims to foster normalization.”

“With the fall of Ben Ali, Israel lost a strong strategic ally in
North Africa,” Kahlawi explained. He indicated that most Zionist leaders
admit this openly, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Silvan Shalom, who
is of Tunisian origins (born in the city of Qabis).

Ben Ali had officially welcomed Shalom in 2005 in a meeting that was
not covered by the Tunisian media, coinciding with the World Summit for
the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis.

Kahlawi said the latest revelations about Mossad’s role in Tunisia
should be further grounds for the constituent assembly to ratify chapter
27 of the proposed constitution, related to crimes of normalization and
prosecuting collaboration with the Zionist state.

He added that “al-Nahda had rejected the criminalization of
normalization, with a demagogic argument contending that the Tunisian
constitution will last longer than the Israeli state, which will
inevitably perish!”

Most Tunisian anti-normalization activists suspect the real reason
behind al-Nahda eschewing the criminalization of normalization to be
“pressure from the US on the ruling troika, and specifically on the
movement, to prevent the ratification of chapter 27, which had been
proposed by anti-normalization associations.”